Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Splendid Fairy-wrens: demonstrating the importance of longevity
- 2 Green Woodhoopoes: life history traits and sociality
- 3 Red-cockaded Woodpeckers: a ‘primitive’ cooperative breeder
- 4 Arabian Babblers: the quest for social status in a cooperative breeder
- 5 Hoatzins: cooperative breeding in a folivorous neotropical bird
- 6 Campylorhynchus wrens: the ecology of delayed dispersal and cooperation in the Venezuelan savanna
- 7 Pinyon Jays: making the best of a bad situation by helping
- 8 Florida Scrub Jays: a synopsis after 18 years of study
- 9 Mexican Jays: uncooperative breeding
- 10 Galápagos mockingbirds: territorial cooperative breeding in a climatically variable environment
- 11 Groove-billed Anis: joint-nesting in a tropical cuckoo
- 12 Galápagos and Harris' Hawks: divergent causes of sociality in two raptors
- 13 Pukeko: different approaches and some different answers
- 14 Acorn Woodpeckers: group-living and food storage under contrasting ecological conditions
- 15 Dunnocks: cooperation and conflict among males and females in a variable mating system
- 16 White-fronted Bee-eaters: helping in a colonially nesting species
- 17 Pied Kingfishers: ecological causes and reproductive consequences of cooperative breeding
- 18 Noisy Miners: variations on the theme of communality
- Summary
- Index
14 - Acorn Woodpeckers: group-living and food storage under contrasting ecological conditions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Splendid Fairy-wrens: demonstrating the importance of longevity
- 2 Green Woodhoopoes: life history traits and sociality
- 3 Red-cockaded Woodpeckers: a ‘primitive’ cooperative breeder
- 4 Arabian Babblers: the quest for social status in a cooperative breeder
- 5 Hoatzins: cooperative breeding in a folivorous neotropical bird
- 6 Campylorhynchus wrens: the ecology of delayed dispersal and cooperation in the Venezuelan savanna
- 7 Pinyon Jays: making the best of a bad situation by helping
- 8 Florida Scrub Jays: a synopsis after 18 years of study
- 9 Mexican Jays: uncooperative breeding
- 10 Galápagos mockingbirds: territorial cooperative breeding in a climatically variable environment
- 11 Groove-billed Anis: joint-nesting in a tropical cuckoo
- 12 Galápagos and Harris' Hawks: divergent causes of sociality in two raptors
- 13 Pukeko: different approaches and some different answers
- 14 Acorn Woodpeckers: group-living and food storage under contrasting ecological conditions
- 15 Dunnocks: cooperation and conflict among males and females in a variable mating system
- 16 White-fronted Bee-eaters: helping in a colonially nesting species
- 17 Pied Kingfishers: ecological causes and reproductive consequences of cooperative breeding
- 18 Noisy Miners: variations on the theme of communality
- Summary
- Index
Summary
Acorn Woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus) are distributed in foothill and montane habitats in Oregon, California, the American south-west, western Mexico, and southward through Central America to Colombia. Throughout their range, they are closely associated with oaks (genus Quercus), most commonly being found in pine–oak woodlands. They are generally quite common and conspicuous, and are well known for their unique habit of storing acorns, often by the thousands, in specialized trees known as storage trees or granaries. Acorn storage is characteristic of many, although not all, populations of Acorn Woodpeckers throughout their range.
Acorn Woodpeckers are also cooperative breeders. Within the family Picidae, they share this habit with the Red-cockaded Woodpecker (Chapter 3) and several tropical and Caribbean forms which, like the Acorn Woodpecker, belong to the melanerpine line. Birds in social units store and defend acorns and other mast communally. Although acorns constitute a major portion of their diet, particularly during the winter, Acorn Woodpeckers also engage in a wide variety of other foraging techniques, including sapsucking, flycatching, bark gleaning and seed eating.
We studied Acorn Woodpeckers at three sites (Fig. 14.1): Hastings Reservation (HR) in California (W.D.K.; this study, begun by MacRoberts and MacRoberts (1976), has been ongoing since 1971), Water Canyon (WC), New Mexico (P.B.S.; primarily between 1975 and 1984), and the Research Ranch (RR), Arizona (P.B.S. and C. Bock; conducted from 1975 to 1978).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Cooperative Breeding in BirdsLong Term Studies of Ecology and Behaviour, pp. 413 - 454Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990
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